A Mad Mad World
by Nithke
Summary: One morning, Trinity wakes up and discovers that there never was a Matrix...only one woman in a mental hospital who thinks she's been unplugged. An AU. (Concluded...and edited.)
1. Awake

**This is a story I wrote all summer and ended in September, so naturally three months later I finally got around to editing it and adding a postscript. I really love the theme of it, even if I do get a bit uber-dramatic sometimes; so read again if you wish, read for the first time if you dare. Relax, the second chapter explains things a bit more. And please, I do like reviews.**

**SHADES OF GRAY**

(formerly A Mad Mad World)

"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.

-Lewis Carroll, _Alice__'s Adventures in Wonderland._

"I tell them that I'm doing fine/Watching shadows on the wall…"

-John Lennon

Trinity is, to say the least, confused…Even too confused to know why, exactly, she is confused.

Doesn't happen very often? You could say that. In fact, doesn't usually happen at all. Especially not to the Ice Queen. And especially not of this magnitude. Trinity is always exactly certain, present in each moment, for how to survive otherwise in the darkly metallic world of today?

But now…A haze of black, a fog of green, what covers her she is not certain. In fact, all that is certain is that she's not sure what's certain. It's a very confusing world, like we said.

_Where exactly-- _she wonders as she drifts through…whatever it is. An idle, unfinished wonder. Kind of like, "Hm. I wonder why that billboard isn't there any more," or, "I wonder if they've driven her crazy yet?" She can't seem to care about the answer, though, because it's too hard to care about things when you don't quite know who you are.

The edge of reason nags at her. _Why...(am I? is this?)_

Oh, but 'Why' is gently gone, too. Ah, well.

It reminds her of something, she realizes. That place between sleep and daytime, where your dreams are tangent with your life and you're never sure what defines real---

But she is lost again in forgetting the sentence and not particularly caring about the answer, when suddenly there is a shock, a jolt, a voice.

"Hello, Adele."

A voice.

Reflexively, she struggles to open her eyes. (She suddenly has eyes to open. _So is that what's wrong_, she thinks fuzzily, _that I can't see right_?) Her brain is muddled, still in a weird sort of dreamstate. So it takes her a while to recognize the next words as they come after a pause.

It is--- yes, she's almost positive it's a woman speaking to her. "How are you, dear?"

"Look, why do you ask her that? You expect her to, what, to sit up and speak normally? You know you're only cheating yourself, Mabel." _Now _that's_ a man, _realizes Trinity She is absurdly pleased at herself for figuring it out, almost missing the next halting message.

The woman sighs, a slight weary edge to her voice. "James, I don't _know_. I guess I just can't…" She swallows. "I guess I just…I just want her to…to say something that proves she's still in a real world. You know? Like, one time I think that she'll just stop ignoring us and, oh, say, 'Fine, Mom. And you?'"

"Hon. Hon, it's been ten years. The doctors say nothing will ever change, she's lost to us…You know what she does when she's awake? She's herself, but she talks to ghosts in the air, she thinks she's driving something, she makes up martial arts routines. There's no hope, Mabel, none. That's why we visited her when she was asleep like this last time. You know it's too disturbing for you and I to see her like…like that."

"Well, _James_, at least if she's deluded, she's conscious. She's alive! Who cares if it's not me that she's talking to? She has some kind of life, she's at least doing something in that brain of hers even if it isn't real--- God, what am I saying? How can that be right?!"

"Sshh…shh----"

"Adele! Wake up, sweetie. Wake up. ---Dan, tell them to stop drugging her up like this when we come. It can't be good for her, fake sleep can't be healthy--- Adele. Adele!"

"Mabel, for the love of God, stop shaking her!"

"I'm just trying to---"

A pair of crystal eyes shake free of slumber.

Adele—or Trinity, or Adele--- stares at her time-worn parents, and then,

she lets out a tiny

high

shriek.

Now, that doesn't happen very often either, does it?


	2. Reality

**CHAPTER TWO**

"Oh, for God's sake…I can't believe it, they must have lowered her dosage. Cheapass hospital," Her father sighs. "Here we go with the visions, then."

There is a hoarse breath from the woman in front of them. She is staring straight at them, lips tensing; you can nearly see her brain working violently trying to comprehend why the world just suddenly changed.

"James, don't _swear_. Addy, honey …Can you see me?" Her mother's voice quavers. "A…dele?"

"Of course she can't see us, Mabel. But you're right, it's funny. It looks like she almost …No, no she doesn't. Sooner or later she'll be talking to some imaginary friend behind you or something. Let's just---"

_"What the hell is this?"_

The girl they called Adele stares at them intensely. _At them_.

"She's hallucinating…or ….." her father says, changing his statement into question when he sees how her eyes search him.

Then his daughter answers it.

"No. No, Dad, I am not fucking hallucinating. At least. At least I don't think so--- and I'm not dreaming—but--- _but if I'm not what the hell is wrong?!_"

Trinity, beautiful, athletic Trinity, is in a wheelchair. A squeaking ugly wheelchair that groans as it pushes her weight down the hall to be analyzed after her 'breakthrough'.

Trinity's hair is no longer as trim as humanly possible. The short sleek shining bob has been mangled. Long dark hair is messily pulled into two lank loose braids, the unfamiliar weights on her shoulders. They are oily and gritty, yet dull and lifeless. She suspects that if she tried to unbraid them, they would be locked together into a pair of dreadlocked whips.

Trinity's shoulders? Imprisoned in a pair of blue hospital pajamas, her wrist encased in a hospital bracelet which rubs the tender white skin beneath it. She smells evil, of sour sweat and unwashed self. Her legs hang bloated and wear (she double-takes) dirty, fluffy, pink …slippers.

"Where am I?" she finally asks the nurse.

From what she hears as she asks unbelieving, in the Briar Institute for the Mentally Ill. She has seen the prisonlike building before, but only from her car en route to her former job, only in passing and never from the inside.

"Why am I here?"

Oh, Adele, don't you remember? You were declared mentally incompetent a decade ago when signs were displayed of paranoid schizophrenia and delusions, eventual withdrawal from the real world, living in a world made up on your own.

A world where she created artificial fighting and eating and sleeping and loving, disregarding entirely what the world was actually. She wants to cry.

_Ten years…ten years gone, ten years I can't relive._ _Wasted!_

_Who for a second except an insane person would suck themselves down a tube and into a—that gray craphole? And then superpowers. Su-per-powers. My God. I gave myself superpowers. "The Matrix has you, Mom and Dad." Idiot--- idiot---And a perfect god of a boyfriend---_

And then, before she can stop herself, a dangerous, wonderful, sane or insane idea follows.

_Hmm._

_Wouldn't the machines like to screw with the head of the One's girlfriend?_

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**The ancient shoutouts remain. **

**Bagpipes5K---**Thank you! Your praise makes me sing happily. sings…happily _A whole new worrrrlllld…an amazing PLACE I've never seeennn…_ Ah. Sorry. That happens. What do you think?

**sleeping**** awake---**Hope this chapter answered some of your questions! So far it is…dun dun dun…neither. Like?

**Oshika**** Kogo---** Cheers, mate! pats you on head I'm sure you're very smart indeed.

**wargdude****—** Thank you, sir, may I have another? is poked with finger Thank you, sir, may I have another? ;)


	3. The Good Doctor

**CHAPTER THREE**

In the ivy-covered office at the top of the institution---

"I can't believe it," Dr. Singh says, clipped and British. "I simply cannot believe it." His brown-and-white hands steeple themselves on the desk as he regards her parents.

Adele's mother, Trinity's mother, shakes her head, tears coming down her face. She dabs them away with a crumpled Kleenex, then sniffs. "It's too good to be true…"

"She should be lost. When no drugs help a patient that delusional, certainly there is nothing mere humans can do to bring them back. Whatever kind of stimulus did you give her? How did you do it, Mrs. Dubois?"

"I told you, nothing, Doctor. Nothing out of the ordinary. We just sat and talked to her like we usually do... Right, Mabel?"

"Yes, Jim. Well…" She hesitates.

"Go on---," says Dr. Singh, leaning forward in his leather chair.

"Well…I did, um, shake her a little," she admits, staring out the window. "Would that…"

"I wouldn't think so," the doctor says, the chair squeaking as he eases back. "No, there has to be some logical explanation for this."

"Like what? What could have made her snap sane again?" says the father. He squints suspiciously. "You're sure you didn't run any kinds of _experiments_ without us knowing. Think real hard, now."

"No, no, nothing," says the doctor, preoccupied. "We…ah…can't know for sure, Mr. Dubois. We will, of course, be running some tests on your daughter to see what could possibly have happened---"

"Like what?" Her mother looks back at Dr. Singh.

"We can't say for sure, probably a brain scan or others, look at her chemistry. Also a polygraph, maybe a couple---"

"A polygraph," the mother says softly, incredulously. "A polygraph, Doctor. So you think…you think she was lying all these years?" Her voice rises and trembles. "You honestly believe she would do that to us, she'd lie to her own mother and father? She would pretend to be out of her mind? For _what_, Dr. Singh? What possible reason could there be?"

"Mabel, _calm yourself_," her father says through his teeth. "I'm sure the doctor has to investigate all angles."

"Exactly, madam," says Dr. Singh. "With a recovery this incredible, we have to take all necessary precautions to ensure that it is in fact a bona fide medical—well, I won't call it a miracle but it is certainly an awesome thing. I'm sure you both understand this?"

"Yes---yes, of course," her mother says. "I'm sorry, I just thought…"

"Understandable. You have been through quite the ordeal."

Meanwhile, Adele is sitting on the end of the bed, her head resting in her hands. Absentmindedly, she fingers her wet hair, which now hangs long against the dressing gown's back, making wet streaks on its frayed brown terry cloth.

_None of which is, of course, real._ She tries to see the code for the hundredth time and fails.

"It's got to be a trick. Got to be," she whispers forcefully.

_Think, Trinity, think. What do I remember before seeing my parents? Nothing. Why can't I? What did they do? Or what did I do? Was I in the Matrix? Did I get captured or reinserted? Agents…It has to be something like Agents, because why would my residual self-image have changed unless they've messed with it? Only…why would they change it to--_

_No, this is insane. It doesn't make sense. None of it. Hell, _I'm_ insane. All that was me imagining, and that's why it's not logical since when are dreams ever logical—but sometimes they are. God damn it!_

_I can't think today and I need to and I can't seem to. Why can't I? Too much at stake, I guess. If I choose the Matrix maybe I'm just sitting here nuts for the rest of my life. But I choose this and it's a program? Then the machines beat me. Can't let them do that. Though--- don't want to fool myself either._

She moans slightly and clenches the hair tighter.

_Oh, Dr. Warner. You did nothing for me. You're either a really bad program, or a really lousy psychiatrist, because either way you just confused me more--- _

She goes over the meeting in her mind and tries to suck any information possible from it.

The anorexically thin doctor had been sitting on a red leather chair, one knee daintily over the other, wristlike ankle and ladylike pointed toe. Her shoes were the kind that looked like you could hear her walking from a floor below, all sharp heel and hard bottom. They were obnoxiously expensive-looking and sexy for a shrink, all brown alligator and stiletto. A clipboard was held in her wraithlike ringed hands as they flew frantically over a pad of paper. Even though Trinity hadn't said anything yet.

Finally the doctor set it down on her lap and folded her mauve two-inch claws delicately atop it. "So! Adele," she had said brightly, singsonging. "I'm Dr. _Warner_. Do you remember me?"

"Should I?" Trinity replied, but couldn't decide whether to be sardonic or actually ask the question.

"Why, Adele, I'm hurt!" She laughed twitteringly. "What about our—oh, it must have been hundreds of weekly sessions? Do you remember any of those at all? You'd be off staring at the walls or piloting your 'hovercraft' while I just looked on. I laughed so hard when you'd try a spinning kick! Why, sometimes you'd look right at me and talk to me, and my pen would be positively overheated, but then you'd ruin it all by calling me Cypher. I could have killed you!" She giggled again. Trinity didn't really feel like joining her.

"No," she said flatly. "I don't remember any of it." _And Cypher's dead_, she had felt like adding, but didn't.

"Ah," said Dr. Warner. She grabbed her clipboard again and wrote hastily in pink ballpoint. "That's---" (she scribbled something else) "interesting."

"What?"

"Hold on a second---" She had written for another two minutes. "There we go. What now?"

"Why is it interesting, _Doctor_, that I don't remember you?"

"Well, Adele," She leaned onto her knees, balancing her elbows on them. The clipboard fell to the floor, but she had grabbed it away before Trinity could read the glittery cursive. "If you don't remember me, does that mean that you were living completely in a world of your own?"

"I…" Trinity hadn't known how to answer the question.

"Were you or weren't you?"

"A world…"

"Come on, say it! This is important. You have to admit that you were imagining things, or else we still have a psychiatric case on our hands. Open up, sweetie!" she smiled, though her glittering eyes were intently fixed on Trinity's.

_Who are you, Dr. Warner? Are you real? Or are you a program to tell me what's real and what isn't?_

The smile was now gone. "Listen, _dear_. You have to say it or else we are still in the same place that we were a week ago. Will it help if I use your old name? Will you react to me then? Fine." She flipped back a page on her clipboard. "Adele, tell me this, tell me that you're not 'the Trinity' anymore. Did that help?"

"How did you know that name?" Trinity had said, shaken.

"Ah, a response! Although it's not the one we're looking for. Come on, I won't be distracted. Besides, that's technically confidential."

"Tell me!"

"Fine. I suppose we can break policy just this once. (Politeness matters, you know, in the real world.) You said it once in here, I remember. You stood up and you walked at me right over there--- frankly I was a bit frightened, especially when you backed me against the wall--- but then I remember it clearly. After calling me some name, the next thing you said was, "My name is Trinity," and I haven't forgotten it since. I've told you something. Now tell me this. Do you ever want to get out of here, honey?"

"Yes…" _More than you know_.

"Then…say…it. Tell me, _dear_, that you're cured. Ten years more. We can't take ten years more of this… Form the words with your lips. All you need to say is, 'I was living in a world of my own', and then we can proceed with your treatment plan. A private room, a rehabilitation program. You're a smart little girl, Adele. You do not belong with the other two idiots in your smelly room. But as long as you insist and fight, guess what?" She had smiled again. "I can have you here for as long as I want. You're dangerous, you know."

Trinity hates this woman with a passion.

"I was living in a world of my own," she said, before adding, "You bitch."

The woman recovered quickly. _Damn._ "Now, was that necessary?" she had said. "Ah, well, you said it and that's what counts. I think that's enough to start on," she declared, and stood up. "We'll get to the root of your hostility and delusions next time, sweetheart. How about a nice bath? Orderly! Will you take the patient, please!"

"I have to get out of here," says Trinity hoarsely. She releases her hands from her scalp and realizes that she was hurting herself.

**There's a picture of Dr. Warner on my DeviantArt account, if you feel like checking it out. I had fun. Here's the site. It won't let me type it in here, so just go to deviantart(dot)com/deviation/13402004/, substituting a period for the, uh, dot. (Duh, readers think.)  
**

**LiMiYa**— Where's it going, you ask? To hell in a handbasket. MWA HA HA--- Ah, seriously. What do you think?

**sleeping**** awake**—Hey, I totally know how you feel. Being wrong happens to me a lot. And I'm glad you're getting it…Look for Neo next chapter; except he may not be quite what you expect, you little lucid dreamer, you. MWA HA HAAAA!!!! There we go.

**Kailekehe****—**Damn straight it's an alternate! Here's more. And I update as soon as the story gets to the bottom of the page, just so you know.

**Oshika**** Kogo—**I love smiley faces.

**KingofZeon****---**I enjoy confusing people! And yes. I like the story too, which surprises me, so I'll keep going indeed.

**DestinyChaser****—**Ooo! Economic! Thank you very _much_, ma'am or sir!

**bant****—**Thanks to you too…glad you are enjoying it.


	4. Coppertop Again

**CHAPTER FOUR**

**Coppertop Again**

For the first time in a decade she's watching a sunset.

A third floor room translates to treetop level at the Briar Institute, country asylum that it is, and so black branches are silhouetted against a perfect view of the evening sky. Violet into purple into dark blue; evening stars have begun to appear, unblocked by any kind of city smog. Naked trees. A lone goose, barely visible, flies toward the pond Trinity remembers is there.

The chair next to her creaks. Dr. Warner has uncrossed and switched her knees. She sighs and turns the pages on the book upright in her lap. Adele remembers seeing the title from when Warner first came in--_ The Case for Christ_. She realizes she too is hopelessly uncomfortable and changes position.

"Try to go to sleep, Adele," monotones her shrink.

"It's kind of hard with you here," Trinity mutters.

Warner sighs, exaggeratedly patient. She sticks a finger in the paperback. "I _realize_ you may _feel_ that way, but do keep in mind it's for your _own_ personal safety. You _have_ suffered a _terrible _shock to your system. We could _never_ forgive ourselves if you committed suicide while left alone…dear."

"If I say I won't kill myself, will you leave?"

"I'm _not_ going to leave until I _know_ you're in dreamland, sweetheart. I've _technically_ been off work for a half-hour now, but I'm going to be here as long as it takes, ok_ay_?" Her laser-whitened teeth gleam forcedly in the dark. "So don't think you can get rid of me by staying awake, ha-ha."

Hopeless, Trinity turns her back on Warner and stares at the wall instead of the window.

She can't imagine it, but five minutes later she realizes her eyes have closed. And an immeasurable amount of time later, she realizes that yes, she is actually falling asleep without thinking about this incredibly peculiar or boring day…

An instant after that she is suddenly, breathtakingly awake.

_What the---Oh God! It's--_

Inexplicably she is watching another scene, one far different from evil skinny women and dark skies. But she doesn't question it, because all she knows—all that matters is that Neo (_Neo!_) is also lying on his side, staring at the wall on his left.

_(I knew it. I knew it.)_

That way he doesn't have to roll over and see there is nobody beside him. There is no sleeping woman. The bed doesn't squeak slightly when she moves. It's built for two but only one is left.

A tear falls gently down his cheek. He wipes it away and gazes at it as he stares at his wet fingers.

Suddenly, in a rush, he springs out of the double, grabbing a pillow and hurling it across the tiny room. He rips half of the bedclothes away and pounds the grey lumpy mattress twice. Sinks gently to his knees and sobs, rocking back and forth, head buried in the hard pallet.

She strains to make out the words he is saying. "Where…(he sobs)…you…where---"

A knock comes then. Neo, cute little-boy cop-killing Neo jumps up and looks away, leaning on the wall with one arm and drawing the other across his eyes.

"Wha--" he says, choked, then clears his throat. "Uh. What?"

Morpheus comes into the room.

"Neo," he says gently. "Neo."

"What?" says Neo, still looking down, anywhere but Morpheus's face.

"Neo, we've run searches for her. Would you like to know what we've found?"

Finally the One looks back at him, red-eyed and puffy on white skin. "Show me."

They are in the computer room. Neo is cold, but has abandoned his blanket for a manly crossing of his arms as he shivers. Morpheus explains.

"When the machines attacked, they didn't leave clues as to why they did it or how they found us. But the question I'm sure we're both asking is, why her? Why Trinity? Why didn't they just kill her outright instead of taking her?"

Neo says nothing.

"Well." Morpheus stares at him until he finally stares back. "I think we have the answer."

"What?" Neo says.

Morpheus pulls up an image on the screen.

"The machines have resorted to a scare tactic, Neo. Reports have come in from possibly ten ships, maybe more. The sentinels attack, very similar to what happened to us. They come when one of the members is in the Matrix, making it impossible to charge the EMP. Break through the roof. And instead of killing the one they take, they simply grab them. We couldn't be sure why before, but recently new information has come." He takes a breath.

"Reinsertion," he says.

"Oh, God, no….no…." Neo mutters.

"This serves as two tactics in one. First of all, the worst thing for any worthy member of the Resistance is being plugged back into the Matrix. It's especially worse if they remember their life on the ship, where they knew the truth…. Niobe is in contact with a man named Iago. He was plugged back in, but they located his mental projection, even if they don't know where his body is in the plants.

"They put him in a state prison. They've told him that he was captured, that he was mentally deranged, that he shot two security guards. The Matrix's explanation for events that they have no real idea of. It drives the person eventually insane, Neo, trying to figure out what's real and what's not…It also pulls their crew members away from their missions, it makes them lose the will to fight, all because one of their number is in jeopardy. This is especially true in our case. The machines usually select someone who most of the crew has emotional ties to…."

Neo takes a ragged breath.

"We've found her," says Morpheus.

--

Red gelatin, red goo, her hair floats around her, still long. Her arms are tangled in it as she lies in the pod. (Somehow, she has a sensation that this is normal.) Plugs rest inside her, up her spine, behind her head. She is aware. (Unexplainably, miraculously, aware.)

_Thank God, thank God, it was all a dream. It wasn't real---Well, it was. But I'm here now. And he'll come for me ---_

She wills it, and the top opens. Sitting up, black hair encased in red, she sees the metal bug coming down to pluck her free, to release the plugs. It is just as she remembered it, with the hacked machine summoned to free a battery. Except it's different---- now the machine has Neo's face attached to it. He hovers intently, freeing her shackles with the pinchers that are his new arms.

And something tickles at the back of Trinity's mind.

"Wait, Neo," she says. "Neo, wait."

He looks at her, jerking his gaze away from loosening the plug on her left arm. "Not now, I'm concentrating---"

"Neo, how did you locate me? Did I get a red pill?"

"No…," he mutters distractedly.

She desperately needs there to be a logical explanation. But if there isn't…_I'm afraid of what that might mean…_

"No, Neo, this is important. _How_ _did you locate my body if you didn't run a trace program_?" she says urgently, grabbing on to Neo's machine hand.

He has no answer. And, since she can't provide one on her own, the dream freezes.

--

She wakes up in the hard hospital bed, Dr. Warner gone, and begs whoever responsible for that to be what is really there.

**Okay…I'm terribly sorry, but I'm deleting the shoutouts for this chappie. I got embarrassingly weird on some of them.**


	5. Deja Vu

CHAPTER FIVE

The music, pop rock, has been blaring for the last half-hour. Woken by it, she is listening to the lyrics idly.

_"All day…staring at the ceiling making… friends with shadows on my wall, _ _all night… hearing voices telling me that I should get some sleep… because tomorrow might be good for something_ ---"

She stares at the candy striper's radio. The teenager cleaning the bathroom takes no notice of her, humming along as she scrubs the counter.

"_Hold on… Feeling like I'm headed for a… breakdown---And I don't know why---"_

Adele clears her throat pointedly and drums her fingers on the bed rail. _You can turn it off now, kid---_

The chorus clinches it.  
  
"_But I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell, I know... right now you can't tell, But stay awhile and maybe then you'll see… A different side of me, I'm not crazy, I'm just a little impaired_---"

The candy striper looks over her shoulder at the noise. When the patient arches an eyebrow at the radio, it is hastily turned to country.

_"You're__ still the One I run to…the One that I belong to…You're still the One I want for life…You're still the One that I love, the only One I dream of…"_

_Is the broadcaster's union playing games with me or something? _

Shania Twain is interrupted by the door opening. Dr. Warner walks in. (_Oh, joy._) "Well! Good _morning_, Adele," she smiles thinly. "How _are_ you today? Ashley, _dear_, you know any music must be kept low." Ashley, obedient little community server that she is, turns it so that it's barely audible. _Well, it seems Dr. Warner has a purpose after all._

 "Never been better," she says. The slight upward tilt of her lips doesn't reach her icy eyes.

 "That's very nice," the doctor says, looking like she's going to pat Trinity on the head—(_Please God no)_. She claps her hands together and rubs them instead. "Well, guess what?"

Her patient stares at her.

After a brief pause – (_What, were you expecting me to say something?)_ – Dr. Warner continues, disheartened. "Well, here's what; today is going to be a little different from the other days, Adele. Because---" she flourishes the skeletal fingers at the doorway "---you have a visitor! And an outing! Doesn't that sound like fun?"

 Trinity turns the tiny eye-twitch into a polite, short smile. "Mom. This is a…surprise."

"Hello, dear! Yes, isn't it?" her mother says anxiously, stepping into the room. "I know I've usually been visiting in the afternoons, but today is going to be special, sweetie. The doctor here has given me permission to take you out for a little bit…I brought you some new clothes, dear, I kind of guessed at your sizes now, you still look as skinny as ever so that shouldn't be a problem. And maybe we can get your hair trimmed a little bit, since it is probably a bit of a bother…"

"Sounds great," her daughter says. She catches the bag her mother tosses on the bed, her thin white arm darting out quick enough to snag it by its handle. Trinity's mouth turns up again at the surprised expression on Dr. Warner's face, then sinks as she starts frantically writing on her clipboard.

Her mother steps over, navy blue tennis shoes squeaking on the white ceramic floor. Tentatively, she takes the bag from Adele, and spreads a pair of sweatpants,a white T-shirt, and a pink (_Since when do I wear anything _pink?_) _sweater on the bed.

"We'll leave you a minute to get changed," smiles Dr. Warner as she steps smoothly away, followed by her mother.

---

_Well, I must say I never thought I'd be here again._

Trinity stares around the hairstylist's place. Unwillingly, memories come to her.

She remembers sitting in a plastic-covered chair as a twelve-year-old, her mother's perm setting, drinking Coke and feeling slightly depressed. All around her, middle-aged women had congregated. The smell of nail polish remover covered everything. They chatted. They read People, and afterwards, they went out to their minivans and drove home, emotions high or low depending on how well their stylist had done.

She was on the verge of exploding when it had come to her then that this possibly couldn't be all there was. Life was not high school, graduation, college, get married, and have your hair curled _every six months by the same people every time_. _It simply couldn't be. _There was something more than this, and she was determined to find it.

And so she remembers Morpheus, and her first time face to face with him.

"_The simple truth, Trinity, is that this is not all there is. All your life you have been searching for more, and now," he paused, "you have found it. The truth is that the whole world as you know it is only the beginning."_

_"What is the Matrix?" Asked as eagerly as she had ever been. _Prove me right, Morpheus, _she had thought._

_"The Matrix is_ _the world that you have known. And tonight, you are going to leave this world with all of its simulation, its artifice. If you choose, tonight you shall see true reality."_

And of course she had chosen the red pill.

Now she stands in the doorway, looking back on a scene she thought she had left years ago. Nothing changed. She still feels like running out the door and finding someone who knows something more.

_But is that someone even there?_

_Was I really driven insane by wanting a way out so badly? Or is this just a game?_

"Ms. Dubois?"

She snaps around to find a hairstylist dressed in black smiling fixedly at her. She gets the impression that she's been being prompted for a few minutes now. "Yes?"

"Ms. Dubois, they're ready for you now. Go to Alexis at the back. She'll get you started--- _No_, Ms. Dubois, Alexis is the redhead with the towel. On your left, farther, farther---."

_I think my entire day is going to consist of being prodded by chirpy people._

A shampooing later, she is sitting in the familiar plastic chair. "So, what are we thinking today?" says Alexis.

"Maybe just a little off the ends…it's such pretty hair, don't you think? So shiny and soft," says her mother. "Could you just shape it up a little---"

But her daughter interrupts her. "Cut it all off."

"What? Adele, do you really think…But you look so nice with long hair! And it's taken forever!" Mabel pleads.

"Mom, it's too much trouble. Just get it off, I don't care how you do it," she says.

"Are you sure? We could do a nice style, good for blowdrying. A little shaping around the face, you know, very attractive." Alexis pops her gum.

"I want it short, but long enough to pin back. And part it on the side," Adele insists. "But that's it. I don't care what it looks like, really."

Her mother sighs. "Well. If you're sure. Isn't that a lot like the style you had before?"

"Yes…I liked that one a lot," she says. _We had a lot of fun together. _

_And if I still look the same, then I can pretend that I might have a way out. _

8888 

Well, that was short, but LONG FOR ME, dammit. Next chapter includes brunch and an urgent telephone call to a landlady who used to have help taking out her garbage (HINT HINT). It won't be up until a week from Wednesday, since I'm going to be imprisoned at YMCA family camp (Were there ever any words that evoked more teenager horror? I don't think so), but look for it then. Now! Out-shouting!

**Wendie****: **Well, here it is, and quite quick after you reviewed, too, which is definitely unlike me. Writing it was like pulling someone else's teeth--- fun, but kind of hard unless you really dig in and concentrate! (watches reviewers go EEEWWW) Thanks loads.

**LiMiYa****: **Not for sure, Li, not for sure….you can draw conclusions, but that was just a dream, not what was really happening. It's a possible scenario. Yes, she is really depressed. All that cheers her up is planting mashed potatoes in Dr. Warner's easy chair. Heh heh heh. PS--I got sick off of watermelon once, and as a result our family has much more watermelon left over than it did before. Want some?

**Bagpipes 5k: **I like the way you referred to it, Adele's life being the hospital one and Trinity's being the ass-kicking kung-fu one….perhaps I shall use that? Cool. Here is the belated chapter. I hope you all have the strength left to review… Yes! An Alice in Wonderland allusion!I love your name, by the way.

**Kitsune-chan****: ** The omnipotent author, luv. And Neo is always freaked out, he just doesn't show it, I'm sure of it. Wow, that movie does sound rather like my story…NEVER SAW IT!!! NEVER EVER EVER!!! (flashes back to Secret Window)

12 Monkeys authors: Yew stole mah story….

Nithke: Are you kidding? I would never! I'm just a lazy author who sleeps around in her chenille bathrobe all day! Honest!

**sleeping**** awake: **Crazy Neo fantasies take the best of us, awake. I myself had a dream where I was snogging Keanu Reeves and kept calling him "Neo". He'd get really pissed off….it was satisfying AND funny. Heh. Hmm…I have an inkling that I'm gonna put her through a lot before the ending (and it DOES end) so she may in fact not get though this okay. (Trinity: Goddamn it! Just give me my boyfriend back already! Me: Sorry, he's dating myself, FluffyLemonn, and sleeping awake. That's why you're in an asylum anyway. (sound of pistol being cocked))

**Destiny Chaser: **Trippy…wooo! Thank you THANK YOU for making the "levels of perception" comment--- it's what the story's about, really. That and my brother's Trinity bondage fantasies----No, no, just kidding. Intrigue! Another good word! Whee! What do you think of this chappie?

**Cinn****:** What is "real"? How do you define "real"? If by real you mean what Trinity can see and touch (and is not a dream in her Adele life) then yes, Chapter One was "real". Very much so.

Aaahh!! Am turning into Laurence Fishburne! Stop it stop it stop it….

Strange is good.

I AM NO MAN.

A lot of guys think I'm a guy….

(ending random movie quotes NOW)

-The Cryptic Author


	6. Girl Interrupted

**CHAPTER SIX**

_I'd have to admit that the last car I rode in was a bit different_, Trinity thinks as she looks out the window.

Five feet away, her parents' new dark green RV sits. Its sides bulge out over the yellow lines. Inside, she knows there is a pair of plastic dice hanging from the rearview mirror. Faux leather seats and a fuzzy steering wheel cover.

_An ironic twist?_ _Or just my mom's bad taste at work?_

She has forgotten a lot about her parents, she realizes. In the past ten years, they had blurred to caricatures in her mind. Her father a stony silent man, her mother a nervous wreck. When she sees them now, there is more to them; her mother's tick of braiding her hair when she was waiting for something, Dad's glasses resting precariously on the tip of his nose.

_But maybe that isn't real either. Maybe the Matrix I'm in has just… hacked the software of my brain and extrapolated on my images of them. I think that's possible--- _

Either way, she thinks, she had forgotten (_or never experienced?_) how anxious of a driver her mother really was. On the ride up to the restaurant, the van had shaken back and forth, in lanes and out of lanes, frequently slowing to a crawl to let other drivers in. Trinity, eternally composed, had been sitting in the front seat trying not to get whiplash.

Suddenly, a black streak of a car had drawn up on the right, its glossy sleekness contrasting with the RV dramatically. Instantly Trinity had turned, one hand against the glass, watching the ebony Lexus and desperately trying to penetrate the shaded windows---

But the driver was a man in a black power suit, talking on a cell phone. He had cut Mabel off and revved down the highway, not looking back. "That…that….rrgh!" her mother had said, hands still desperately clutching the steering wheel. Then she glanced at her daughter. "Why were you looking at him like that?...He wasn't cute, was he?"

Her daughter hadn't answered immediately, just sat staring after the car. In a minute she had realized she had to respond. "No, Mom. I….um….thought I recognized him." Then Adele had finally looked away from the window and settled into her seat, staring at the floor for the rest of the ride.

--

"Well, dear, your haircut looks nice, actually. Doesn't her hair look nice, James?" her mother says now, breaking another silence.

Trinity looks away from the window towards her. Now she is sitting in a booth with flowered seats. Her father has arrived five minutes after they have. He sits in the seat across from her crunching bacon, next to Mom, who saws at a broccoli omelet. Trinity has rearranged a pile of pancakes, but has no intention of eating them.

The meal has been awkward, to say the least.

"--We were going to keep it long, but we figured it'd be just too much bother. And then she can style it herself, without the nurses having to put in pigtails."

"Mm," her father mutters. He takes another bite of hashed browns.

"But I wish you wouldn't slick it back so dramatically, sweet. You look so peaked like that, all bobby-pinned back and sprayed. How about leaving it down?"

Adele can't think of anything to say. She swallows and takes another long drink of water.

Yet another silence comes across the table.

Her mother finally interrupts. "So! How was work?"

"A lot of meetings, mostly. I gotta get back in time for my two o'clock with Harry."

"Harry's his new boss, honey," says her mother. "Your father got promoted to assistant director of factory safety. We are so proud!"

"We have a couple openings for secretarial work, Adele. You're good with computers. When you get out of there, you can come work at the mill," her father declares, shoveling in more food. "How's that?"

"Uh—"_God, I thought I escaped this! I thought I was done with this stupid boring mindless shit---_ Trinity leans against the cushions and rubs her eyes. When she opens them, they are both staring at her.

She knows something is wrong when her father sets down his fork and folds his arms.

"All right, Adele. This is it. We give up."

"James----"

"Mabel, you _know_ what I'm talking about. You're asking it too, don't pretend like you aren't."

"What are you talking about, Dad?" Trinity says wearily.

"Adele. I was ready to gloss over it, to let bygones be bygones. I accepted what the doctors said, that you breaking down wasn't our fault. But now that I've seen you, now that I've been trying to _talk to you_, I begin to doubt what they've ---"

"James! You _promised_ me you wouldn't---"

"Mabel, _let me finish a sentence_!" her father says, darting to the side. Then he looks his daughter dead on, blue eyes to blue eyes. "As I've sat here _trying_ to talk to her and she dodges questions, one thing has sprung to mind, dear, and it's what you've been thinking too. Don't deny it---"

Mabel's mouth opens, but her husband plunges on recklessly. "What I want to know, Adele, is this. Why. _Why_ did you decide to go nuts? Was it some disease of the brain?" He leans in. "Or did you maybe want to leave?"

"I don't know what you mean," she replies, flat.

"Were we so boring? Was your life so uninteresting that a made-up world that called the rest of us the deluded ones was better?" he says, his hands now gripping the table. "_What was so wrong with this world that you had to make your own?"_

She stares at him, eyes narrow.

Then she decides which choice she should stand up for. "_It…was…real, Dad. _It was _real,_" she hisses, and leaps from her seat to sprint.

She hears, vaguely, her mother's cry behind her and her father's footsteps. Also, registering somewhere on the outer limits of her vision, is startled Perkins customer after startled Perkins customer. But all she sees, all she really sees, is the white plastic telephone sitting on the bakery counter.

For now that she's made up her mind, she has a plan. And in her head, one refrain plays, both triumphant and desperate:

_I didn't make it up, I didn't make it up, I didn't---_

She is reaching the phone, she is shoving people aside. She mutters something about an urgent phone call to the girl behind the glass pie case, then grabs the receiver and lifts it to her ear. She dials, fingers slipping on the buttons, a number so familiar in memories that might or might not be false. _("Morpheus, the line was traced, I don't know how---" "…a phone at Wells and __Lake__, you can make it---" ) _As she punches in the final digit of the seven, she listens for a ring, (anything but 'The number you have called was never in service')---

Just as she does, the line goes dead. She whips around. Her father is standing there, thumb pressed on the hang-up.

"Adele, _don't do this_," he whispers.

For a minute, he almost believes she might not run. But she does.

So he takes her down, football style. He pins her to the rough patterned carpet as she struggles, too shocked to injure him. He calls for the pair of policemen having coffee to come help. They oblige. Sadly for her.

--

"I took down an entire force once, you know," she says as she speeds away in the squad car. "Heart of the City Hotel…."

They don't answer a madwoman's ravings. But she is rewarded—she thinks---by the sudden sideways look the cop in the passenger seat gives her.

---

(smacks head) Duh, Trinity. Duh. That's all I can say. Sorry for the long wait, all, I'll be better next time. I had a different plan at the beginning of this, but it developed differently, so Neo's landlady will regrettably not be called. I lied, sorry.

And so the plot thickens! Do you like the thickening?

**LiMiYa**: I know…it's my job to be confusing, luv. Sorry. Here is how I see it--- Trinity is either trapped or freed in a world which may or may not be the Matrix. I won't tell anyone for sure yet, so you can form an opinion one way or the other…Yes! Figure it out! Exactadiddly, reviewerino. Yeah, the part where she was talking about suburban middle-aged life was something that happens all the time to me... Great, now all we have to do is e-mail you the watermelon. I'll get back to you when I've figured out how.

**Bagpipes5k:** Nooo! I tried really hard to figure out how to put that in there, but unfortunately, no dice. I was going to have the waiter resemble him, since that happened to me yesterday, but for some reason felt like not being cruel…Hyper muses are good.

**sleeping**** awake: **Well, she's not gonna be DEAD, if that's what you mean. Or…wait…hmm, I have two possible endings competing for attention, and one of them has a possibility of Carrie-Anne injuries. A glancing possibility! Glancing! Be assured, though, that she'll live on, she just won't be quite sure about some things. And no, there is no simple way for her to get out of this, so don't worry. Glad you're impatient! I live off impatience!!! Even though I just totally confused myself!!!

**Diamond King**: Thanks loads, hope you like this chapter. Not many people will, I predict.

**Cinn**: Okay. Then our definitions are relatively similar, I guess…Insanity and creativity. It's remarkable how often those two traits coincide! (Johnny, how is it possible to have so many good quotes AND be incredibly sexy?) Anyways. Thanks!

**Kailekehe****:** Sweet Jesus! I have finally spelled your name right on the first try…And….aack…I was always horrible at "Guess That Song". So you're just gonna have to tell me. Although I will tell you NUZZING unteel Chawpter, ah, Tehn or so. Merci beaucoup!

(Woo, went Merovingian for a minute there. Next thing you know my midday snack will be olives. Hate olives.)

**Destiny Chaser:** What a lovely long review! I know--- I think Trinity sounds too much like me sometimes. Which is not good. As we are totally different people and she is the type that would beat me up… I love dark humor. And I know Dr. Warner comes off a bit patronizing…more than a bit…okay, a lot. But she is kind of a yin to Trinity's yang, and I deliberately overdrew all the other characters to make her think that maybe this isn't real.

I don't know if Warny will show up in the next chapters, since Trinity will be moved somewhere…different…heh. Where she takes even more refuge in the past. (Nice phrase, by the way.) I hope this chapter developed quicker than other ones…next one will have a lot of memories and old short fiction references involving voluptuous females and carnivorous beasts found in India. (If anyone finds out what the heck I am referring too, they get to share LiMiYa's watermelon.)

**Ivory4:** That's me plan, luv! I like sucking people in. I think I was a black hole in previous lives, as was illustrated by large chunk of antimatter found in earlobe.

….

I really need to get off the marijuana... ah, just kidding.

You all are awesome. My self esteem is greatly increased!


	7. Jujitsu

**CHAPTER SEVEN**

Trinity's new room is not so different from the old one. Both of them were boring, white, and sterile.

This one just has more locks on the outside of the door.

And oh, yeah, the bed is different too. The old one was conventional twin-sized with hospital blankets. The new bed has rails on the sides. With loops of fabric attached to the rails. Loops just the right size to hold down someone's arms and legs before—or after---the sedative kicks in. But other than that, the rooms are identical---

Wait. One more thing. In this room, when Trinity goes to the window and rips open the shades to see out, the view is quite different, actually.

Why? Well, longer way to the ground. Much longer.

Trinity smiles, because this is what she likes to see…a metal jungle, a bustling place where people go about their lives oblivious to the fact that they're in a dream world. Different, again, from the peaceful woodlands of the Briar Institute. Here, it is even easier to imagine that this world isn't real.

But her parents don't know that, of course. They put her here because it was different. In her father's words, the previous hospital "failed to take necessary precautions to ensure relapses weren't going to happen". In her words, her parents had taken her here because the other institute hadn't 'cured' her enough. _This one won't succeed either, Mom and Dad. Too bad._

Yeah, she admits, it was hard an hour ago. She had just been deposited in her new room when they were admitted in to see her for the first time since the restaurant two days ago. And since she still—isn't---a hundred percent certain about whether they're real or not, it was rather difficult to watch. Her mother, anyways.

"Adele…Adele…Try to realize the truth, Adele, come on. There's no other world, nowhere else. Just us, and we'd miss you so much if you went--- away, again…Oh, answer me, damn it! Don't, don't stare through me…" Mabel let out a wail.

She steeled herself. _She's a program…she's a program…she's a program…_Repeated over and over to drown out Mom's sobs and Dad's steely "Look at your mother! Look at what you are doing, Adele! You have no heart, none!". She had stared over their heads or anywhere but their eyes. It was easier. Besides, who has respect for machines?

She whirls suddenly. There is a strange noise in the corridor…Shouting?

The lights aren't on in the hallway, it being after eight-thirty, so she can't see the people outside clearly. Her slippers flop over to the door, but before she can try to peer through the window to see, the locks fly open.

A man with a white coat is looking impatiently at his watch, an orderly next to him. Their faces are cast in shadow, since Adele's eyes haven't adjusted to the dark yet. She has a general impression of medium height on the man, and dumpy curls on the orderly. But more interesting is the second woman fluttering frantically around.

"Doctor, I really _must _protest--- And don't give me any of that _jurisdiction_ you Lancomb Ward people like to throw around, the facts of the matter are that Adele has made _enormous_ leaps and bounds under my care, I was the one responsible for her initial breakthrough, you have _no_ idea what it could do to her psyche to be deprived of me…I demand you to--- Oh! Ah, hel_lo_, dear!" Dr. Warner finally notices Trinity standing there. "How _are_ you?"

Her eyes are desperate as she smiles widely at her patient.

The new doctor doesn't notice Dr. Warner. Finally Trinity hears him breathe heavily in the dark. "Well, Angela, if the patient works that well with you, then…"

"Go fuck yourself, Dr. Warner," says Trinity, seizing her opportunity.

Warner's face falls as the man turns to her. Adele's eyes widen as she takes in his appearance. "On second thought, perhaps it would be better if you left. I shall meet with you on Saturday evening to discuss the case. Goodbye," he says, striding past the shocked Dr. Warner and shutting the door as the silent nurse follows him.

Trinity should be celebrating mentally. Instead, she is panicking.

"So…" he says, flipping through a file, not noticing Adele's shallow breaths. "A…a….How exactly is that pronounced again, Ms. Cunningham?"

"Rhymes with 'bell'," the nurse whispers to him.

"Of course. I had forgotten. Well, Adele, I'm happy to work with you again. It's been, what, three years since I saw you last?" He chuckles. "If you don't remember me, I'm Dr. Jacobsen. I used to be at Briar, but moved to the city. I handled your case for a few months, if I recall correctly, although you didn't seem to see me at the time and were unusually hard to deal with then. I'm hoping we can work through this issue together, and in time bring you back to a functioning member of society. In most cases like yours, a simple realization that the events imagined cannot possibly be true, combined with some antipsychotics, can treat the person in question quite well. If you consent to deal with me, it can be accomplished in half the time…"

But Adele is not focused on what he is saying. Instead, she is backing up slowly, step by step, and remembering what someone had said once.

_"Nobody's ever beaten an Agent." No ordinary human. And all Neo manages is a sort of stalemate._

_Of course they wouldn't let me realize it's not real and live. What if I escaped?_

The man in front of her is bald. His voice drones, a monotone, peaked eyebrows lifting and falling periodically. Under the lab coat, a suit is neatly in place. No earpiece, no sunglasses, but she cannot shake the fact that his is the face that haunts rebels' dreams.

_He's lying about seeing you before, you know he is. As soon as he is done, he'll drop the jolly act. And in his coat pocket, you know that there will be a gun. He will pull it out and he will kill you efficiently. Your blood will splatter on the floor. Your eyes will stare blankly at the ceiling. This is it. As soon as he is done playing with you, you are dead. _

_Not without a fight I'm not…_

"Smith," she says coldly. _Oh God oh God I didn't expect it to end this soon---_

He stops. He plays the shocked doctor. "---_What_ did you just call me?"

"Stop messing with my head, Agent. You and I both know exactly what you are. Now are you going to give me the gun and let me shoot my way out of this building…unlikely…or am I going to have to hurt you?" Her voice doesn't waver, even though she is shaking. The orderly runs out of the room.

Surprisingly, he doesn't take the bait. "Adele, be reasonable, of course I don't have a gun---"

_Yeah, bullshit._

_And focus…Now!_

This self-image is less lithe and slender than her previous ones. The thighs are bigger, and of course it's harder to fight in blue pajamas than skintight leather. Still, she manages a passable round kick. _Six years of tae kwon do before unplugging means that even if the Real isn't real, my skills still are---_

_Yes! _

The Agent drops his clipboard and blocks her foot. _So he reveals himself. _Perversely happy, she tries to nail him in the gut with the other, but he blocks that too. Her fists flail at his face, again and again, yet he is faster. _Why isn't he hitting back?_

The door flies open. For the second time in three days, men in uniforms advance on her. She smiles slightly. And this time, she fights.

One comes, and she manages to knock him out with a well-placed kick to the head. _An opportunity, isn't it. _Stepping lightly over his body and through the temporary break in the group of men, she leaps out into the hallway.

Another line of hospital security faces her. One of them is carrying a gun---_with needles?_ He lifts it.

_Shit. _

Trinity dodges the first dart, but the second one hits her in the stomach. She pulls it out, her vision already dulling. The world swims around her. Motion suddenly is much harder than it was. Her kicks and jabs slow gradually as feeling in her arms and legs is lost. Finally, she collapses. Her eyes shut as she lies in a heap on the floor, completely confused.

She wakes up God knows how much later. Can't see or feel, but she can hear.

"Excellent shot, Mr. Dobbs. I am very much in your debt," says the doctor's voice.

"Uh, thanks, Doctor," says a young man. "Really lucky that you know jujitsu, isn't it? I mean, she might have killed you. Pretty good for a wacko."

"Yeah, you see that chick _move?_" another enthusiastic guy says. "Wicked awesome---"

"Shut up, Laurel," a muffled voice mutters.

"Well. We made a mistake in not restraining her. She shall be of course tied down for any future visits with me," Smith says. Trinity is suddenly aware of cloth straps cutting into her arms, legs and ribs.

"When does the tranq wear off?" a woman's clipped voice inquires.

"Oh, it should be any minute now. In fact---"

Trinity's eyelids can open. They do. The doctor who looks like Agent Smith is staring down at her as she lies in the bed.

"Welcome back, Adele. Shall we resume our session?"

"There's no escaping you, is there?" she asks dully.

He smiles. _Well, that wasn't quite like him. So what. He's just screwing with your head. _"Not at the moment. My superiors believe it would be wise for you to get over your irrational phobia of me, in essence, to face your fears. Of course, should you be unable to work productively because of panic, I believe you would be transferred to another doctor. Do you feel you can cope and not be inordinately hostile towards me? Perhaps even work out the misconception of my identity you have?"

She looks into his---_warmer?--_eyes. "I don't know what kind of game it is you're playing, Smith---"

"Adele, _please! _I don't know why you're so afraid of me. I'm not an Agent, or whatever you called me. Really. Now go to sleep and we shall work this out in the morning."

"You mean you'll kill me in the morning."

"Then I will see you tomorrow at ten. Please do the courtesy of not attacking Margaret here as she unbinds you, for then you will be forced to spend entire days with restraint. Good night. Follow me out, gentlemen."

One of them stays with the woman, who clinically unties her and backs out, flipping off the light and locking the door. Trinity spends a sleepless night in frantic thought while looking out the window.

_It's him…of course it's him…_

&-&

Damn, they beat her again. Sorry for no posts, was being idiotic about a story I wrote and I had a bad case of writer's block. But I compensated by putting in what _seems to be_ everyone's favorite bad guy! It may not actually _be_ him, so be warned, but I sure had fun writing him. A question---Did she just project images from her real Adele life into her Trinity life (i. e. having seen Dr. Jacobsen before), or are the machines messing with her by putting Agent Smith in?

**SapphireNight****:** Thanks! You gave me warm fuzzies, dear. That's incredibly nice of you. Not many people can do that anymore…I updated, so please do tell me what you think of it. PS--- How depressing is this? Really?

**Destiny Chaser:** Well, the beasties didn't show up this time, so you got one more shot as to extrapolating about them. (And aack! Pawing! RAAAAAAPE!!!!)

Thanks, I'm trying to nail how her parents react and how she does, so I'm glad you think I did good. This is kind of hard to write, to be honest, which is why the updates take forever. It's funny how much of my feelings show up in my writing, since Trinity feels like me about her world sometimes. And I also noticed that her parents are my parents WAY exaggerated. (pauses)

What?

Anyways, I hate obvious fics. So this will never be obvious. Some of you will hate the ending because of it. And I think this sped it up quite a bit, don't you? Thanks again for reviewing nicely…:D

**sleeping**** awake:** Hmmm--- the cops MIGHT remember. OR MIGHTN'T THEY??? Bum bum bummmm. More about that next chapter. Trin remembers her life before the Real, then. It'll be shweet. So now you know what's behind the corner, too! Unlike everyone who DOESN'T read every shoutout…Thanks, I love giving suspense. I am afraid that this was a quite long wait-and-see, though.

**LiMiYa****:** Exactly! Exactly. Right on the money. Murky Realities "R" Us, that's what I should have called this story. Thanks, faithful reviewer!

**Kailekehe****:** I like Dashboard Confessionals, although my friend is more into them than me. Still, the lead singer. Me-ow. I recently bought The Animatrix, watched World Record on it, and was just as puzzled as you are now. Yes, wait and see. Why didn't she test the Matrix before now? Because simple answer: she didn't want to know. If the Real World wasn't real, she would have killed herself. Makes you wonder if she would have clicked off the phone before it could ring…The last chapter may contain some limit-testing.

Yaaaaay! Favorites! You rock!

**Bagpipes 5k:** I'm sorry, but you jumping into the Perkins scene would be a real-person projection, which of course got on my case about because I made Lara Croft maim Lindsay Lohan in a fic. : Do we have a deal, Ms. Nithke? Nithke: Yeah, I got a better deal. How about I give you the finger….and you give me uploading rights? Huh? How about it?) So no can do, gol darn it anyhow. But Trinity appreciates your sentiment.

**Sailorfusion****:** Thanks! But I'm afraid you'll be disappointed if you want real world. Or non-confusing. But I'm glad you like it! I tossed in the orderly especially for you and anybody ELSE reading this out loud.

**Cinn****: **Glad you think so, anyways. Unlike so many other people nowadays. :D Read on!

Review, everyone? Please?


	8. Cruel Logic

**CHAPTER EIGHT**

"Adele," says Smith. "Adele." He taps his pen on the side of the chair next to her bed.

She ignores him, staring at the ceiling.

It is the next morning, ten minutes into the session. The preliminaries have been exchanged. 'Dr. Jacobsen' doesn't write on the clipboard like Dr. Warner did; instead he asks open-ended things and waits for her to respond. _Like I'm going to play along._She is flat on her back in the bed. Strapped down, defenseless. A white butterfly pinned to the mat.

This time, however, he seems to be demanding action. Trinity swallows. "What?"

"Adele, let's try something new. I want to ask you a question. What do you recall of your life before you left it?"

She doesn't answer---_I owe you nothing---_

---but Adele remembers becoming Trinity very well.

IIIIIIIII

It was tenth grade that made her what she is today. Not the classes, but instead those dim after-school hours in the basement, multiple searches running on her three salvaged computers until her father came home from work. When he walked in the front door, Adele had to watch herself to make sure she only spent an hour or so down there. They would worry otherwise.

They worried anyways. Or at least her mother did obviously; her father was more the angry type. Once in a while, if she forgot and stayed down for more than usual, he exploded. That was why she watched herself. If he erupted because she had ignored them in favor of machines, those machines would get unplugged, her data scrambled and hard drives gone. Couldn't happen, of course. A lot of important things were on them.

(Or were they really that important? Could those hours in the basement have been a sign of mounting insanity, an obsession? Could her father's rage really have just been misplaced fear for his daughter's life? _No---He's always been angry---_)

In his rants, aside from Adele, modern technology, and himself, he would blame Jeremy.

He was in her English class, a punk who sat in the back row. He was ironically gregarious for a Goth. Oh, teachers hated him. Of course he was _intelligent_, he was a smartass. He had sarcasm mastered, which was _why_ they hated him. But if you earned his approval…if he liked you, people were happy to befriend him, because he was too good for them and the world.

That was, of course, what attracted him to the girl beside him.

Adele sat in back too. She had moved through ninth grade like a shadow. Farther and farther away from the world, desperate to escape it, she was distanced from everyone. Jeremy took the desperation for coolness, since she had always been good at composure. He started hitting on her. Could not crack the ice, which intrigued him more. Then finally one day she caved when he saw her lips curve upwards slightly at a mocking joke he'd made. He knew he had her.

But he was mistaken. She had him.

Over at his house during the summer, they spent long hours in his basement. Not kissing, (well, scarcely ever) he showed her his world.

Hacking was the springboard out, he told her, you can screw the man over and win. You know you're different from all these shitheads here because at home you have a secret. A little secret tucked away in plastic, Adele. Watch…

And then when he had shown her all she needed, she dumped him.

It wasn't that, actually, that he had been useful but now wasn't. It was more, just, him. He insisted that the world is meaningless, life sucks and then you die. She would mentally rebut that. No, the world has meaning, just not here, somewhere else. This is too mundane, Jeremy. Too boring to be the true meaning of the world. So she told him goodbye one day and then dodged his calls and spent the next year in her own basement. Searching and watching.

What did her parents think? That she had been iced by him and was resouling herself through computers. Or, alternately, that once she hadn't been bored with them but now was. They had it half right. It was more that she'd _always_ been bored with them, actually.

And they were fully right about one thing, that it was all Jeremy's fault. Of course it was.

He had, after all, taught her how to manipulate the world...

IIIIIIII

Smith shifts in his chair. He waits.

Finally she speaks, not the answer he was hoping for. "What's it to you, Agent?"

"Perhaps I should explain," he says. "If you cooperate and tell me your version of the events before your breakdown, we can show you how unrealistic that version is. I believe that you, a logical person, will then see the light, so to speak— the true reality. So, are you willing to be cured?"

"I don't need curing," she says harshly. "I know what's real, and it's not this."

He sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose. "I was afraid of this response. Very well, then, let's try a less-interactive tack. Simply listen to me."

"No."

"I am sorry, but I do not believe you have a choice. Now. If I remember correctly, you believe that this world is nothing but a simulation, and that the rest of us are completely unaware of this. You, however, have been sucked out of it and are residing in a "real" world. How plausible is that theory, I must ask you?"

"It's real. I don't give a damn whether it's _plausible_ or not." She closes her eyes. If she doesn't connect his voice with his face, she can keep responding and not be paralyzed by helpless fear.

"But you see, that's all that matters really."

"What is?"

"My point, Adele, is how do you know what's real? Your senses are telling you that there is another world, because you have experienced it. But couldn't they be lying? Because if you're right, Adele, then that means that my senses are lying to me too. We're both hooked up to a machine somewhere telling us that what we see now is real--"

"No, you're not hooked up," she says. "You're a program doing a good job of acting."

He barrels on. "—and so plausibility is the key. If you cannot in fact distinguish between what might be real and what is real, you must form a theory that makes the most sense. And the theory that makes the most sense right now is that you have in fact been insane! You have imagined the other world. It is a sheer fabrication. Holding onto it is shielding your eyes to truth!"

"I experienced it, didn't I?" she says, grasping at straws. "How could my imagination be that good, Smith?" But her defenses are coming down. _Finding the truth was my whole life. What if I wanted to be special so badly that I created my own kind of truth? _

"Don't we make up dreams? And at the time, those dreams are as real as what you think is your world…but the dreamer usually realizes upon awaking that those things never happened. Wake up, Adele. It was only a daydream."

"No," she says desperately. "How could it have been---"

"Please! See my point!" he says. "For one instance, shut your eyes to the fantasy you've created and see! I am not an Agent, you merely projected me into a world of your own. You imagined the man 'Morpheus' and your war against evil. _You…imagined…all of it._"

His words eke through the cracks. She focuses on her breathing, looking anywhere but at him.

"Adele," he says. "Let me tell you about the day you were committed." Smith leans forward, nailing in the coffin, his breath on her ear. She does not look at him. "You were seventeen. You left your house at four o'clock on a rainy Sunday." He flips through the file on his lap. "There had been some sort of dispute with your parents, I believe? You ran outside, and they became worried that you were gone forever. You took no clothes, no belongings, but fifty dollars.

"You rode in a taxi to outside an abandoned building. Paid the cab driver an enormous fare and told him to, ah, 'get the hell out of here'…Your parents phoned agencies searching for you until finally they found the driver. He took police to the building where he had left you. They ran upstairs until they found you. You were sitting in a chair, talking to thin air. When they took you to Briar, you didn't fight it, but went peacefully. Talking all the way."

He closes the file. "Now, is your version of events more likely than this? Or is being delusional less likely than there being another world?"

Trinity doesn't answer, her drive to resist finally gone.

IIIIIIII

The title of the short story she thinks about after he leaves is "The Lady or the Tiger?" Another memory from tenth grade, but this time from English class.

The story takes place in a country ruled by a barbaric king.

He has built a coliseum that is both entertainment and court system. In this arena, a man will be led forth after committing a crime. He faces two doors, one of which he has to open, not knowing what is behind them. Both are soundproof and identical.

The only difference between them is what is ready to spring out. Behind one door is a vicious tiger, giant teeth and claws, ready to maul whoever it sees next. Behind the other door? A lady, beautiful, to which he will be immediately married. It doesn't matter if he already loves someone, or is engaged or partnered--- he will still be wedded and installed in a new home. Either choice is funny for the crowds, and nobody can argue with the method of justice…for doesn't the man have his choice of endings?

In the story, a young man falls in love with the daughter of the king. The king is outraged when he finds out, and sentences him to the arena. When he is in there, he looks up where she sits.

She knows which beast is behind which door. She has for a sleepless night. Meeting his gaze, she jerks her hand just the slightest bit to the right. He instantly springs forward and opens that door.

Now, the writer asks his audience, what comes out of the door? Can the man trust his lover?

The lady--- which the one the princess loves will be swiftly married to? Or the tiger, who will kill him, but he will die eternally faithful?

Two answers to the equation where there can only be one---

But this time, she finally chooses the tiger.

IIIIIII

So she's decided for real, I guess. Stupid Smith.

**Bagpipes 5k: **Yeah, you could say that...Wow, I do enjoy imperiling Matrix characters, don't I?

**Cinn: **It was something like how cool insane people are, methinks. Sorry if the shoutouts don't make sense-- written without caffeine....

**SapphireNight:** I love Agent Smith, so of course he was going to show up in this one. (The other hot male Matrix character puts in an appearance in Chapter Ten. And no, it's not Cypher.) Glad you liked the chapter! Here's another one, and faster too.

**sleeping awake:** Aha, twisting and turning plot devices are so useful....heh heh. Not a lot happened in this chapter, but I hope you enjoy it. Action is kind of overrated anyways, isn't it?

Note to self: do not post chapters on days right before the server is down....

Anyways, next chapter is even more fun, what with a broken window, more crazy dreams, a hint of song and an internal monologue. Hang on for a lovely ride.


	9. Future

**CHAPTER NINE**

_So that's it then. _

_The conclusion._

The ending, the wonderful decision has been made. And she feels strangely numb.

_It's for real this time; the scene in the restaurant was my delusional mind trying to cling to a comforting false reality. _

_It wasn't the truth. It never was the truth._

A day and a half later, she is in the same place—on her narrow bed. This time, she's not strapped down, but drifting off to sleep on her side.

Dr. Jacobsen is thrilled with her progress. "I knew that would appeal to you, Adele," he says. "You are obviously a very intelligent person. Can't hang on to that illusion for long, too hard to maintain---"

_No, you're wrong, _she realizes sleepily, letting herself finally think. _It's harder this way. I have to correct myself all the time, Doctor. I start thinking about—oh, who knows, the texture of protein goop—and I have to rein it in, say, No, Adele, that was never real. It can't have been, remember to choose the most likely possibility. You're cheating yourself otherwise; you always want the truth, and well this IS the truth and nothing's going to change that. _

_And there are things I can't think about, Doctor. My future here. The fact that there is no rescue mission coming for me. _

_Neo.___

_You're not real, Neo. God, it hurts to say that. Like I'm betraying him or something—But how can I betray a made-up man?_

_You know what I just realized? I've never really been in love. I kissed Jeremy five times, but that was lust or something in between. It's so weird. I remember thinking that when I was unplug--- when I entered my dream world, too. 'Well. I've never been kissed, now.' So technically the time I kissed Neo was my first kiss. _

_And it was such a great thought, because I regretted those times with Jeremy afterwards. I was using him, you know. I was just bored, horny, sixteen. It seemed like it shouldn't count for a "magical first" of something. _

_But it's weird that kissing Neo with sparks raining around us felt more real then kissing Jeremy, which was actually---_

_Stop it. Stop it now, T---Adele. Do you want to go nuts again, or what? Go to sleep. Every time you do, you erase memories of your false life. Remember what the neurologist told you…_

So she drifts off, carefully thinking of nothing. She hadn't dreamed last night, and doesn't intend to now---

They find her anyways.

IIIIIIII

For some reason, she is walking through a grocery store. She picks up a lettuce head and idly notices its brown leaves. Throws it in the cart she is pushing anyways. It lands next to a glass-based lamp and a toilet paper nine-pack.

In the way that dreams have, she looks utterly different yet knows it is her, the figure she sees. She is not actually in the body, but looking at it. Still, that's her--- with the light brown thinning hair in a limp ponytail, light blue track suit and expensive sneakers. Casually shoving her way through what she knows is a Target.

Weirdly, she picks up a Barbie doll off the shelf next to the lettuce and tosses it in.

A boring dream that she doesn't realize is a dream. And a boring store filled with the oddest assortment of items, ice cream next to commemorative plates in a section marked "Housewares". Still, it all seems completely normal to her. Until she gets to the cash register.

There, in that odd duality of dreams, she is again.

This time, the face she sees in the mirror every day stands behind the counter. Her hair is longer, pulled severely back so that you can see the gray at the temples. Wrinkles at the corner of her mouth and eyes. She is wearing a red smock with a "Hello, I'm Trinity badge pinned to it.

Her eyes are lifeless, spirit crushed. She moves to take the first item from the cart and scan it. In her sleep, Adele breathes shallowly.

The scene shifts. Adele is typing, a hundred words a minute, in the decaying front room of her father's company. Her parents are sitting, gazing adoringly at her. "Finally, I get my baby girl back in the real world," says her mother.

Her father nods and stands up, stretching. "When you're done with that, get to work on the Waldorf memo. I need it by this afternoon. I'm sure you can do twenty pages? Then go on home, we don't need you anymore tonight. If you wouldn't mind putting in those sausages for dinner…"

"Start the green beans, too," says Mom.

The dream changes, back in time, and she's driving a tiny white Oldsmobile to her second job. A small tendril of hair comes loose from the ponytail and shakes over one eye as she talks on a giant cell phone. "No, Jeremy, it's _your_ turn to clean the apartment! I work all fucking _day_ and you do nothing. You just sit there on the Internet while the dirty dishes sit in the sink. If you don't shape upsoon I'm _leaving_, do you hear me, asshole?"

She fumbles to hit the off button and swerves the junked car into the other lane.

Doesn't see the semi coming from behind.

The car flips end over end, too high to just result from being rear-ended. Panic runs through her, this feels real. The dream ends just before she hits the pavement.

IIIIIIII

She sits bolt upright in bed. _It was only a dream, only a dream, only a dream…_Adele eases back down, half-awake. _That wasn't real. You're fine._ She thinks of nothing again----

Then it hits her. _But it will be, won't it?_

Trinity finally lets herself run through the consequences of living in Adele's world. She realizes what her subconscious was trying to tell her with the dreams.

It appalls her.

_I _will_ work some shitty job, won't I?—I didn't even finish high school, after all. My parents, or what I think is my parents, will be happy, but I'll be depressed forever. Jeremy and I won't get back together, but still, I might meet someone... And I'll never love him, because he won't measure up to the relationship I thought I had once---_

_Oh, Neo! _

She rushes out of bed. _How could I give up like that? If there's even the slightest chance that the Real is there--- What gives me the right to decide this? How could I abandon him?_

_I can't live that life, God, never. Always I will doubt it, I will never be content, I will never be happy._

Then it strikes her.

_There is a way to know for sure…_

She rips away the blinds on the window. Carefully, she looks down to the city below her. _Quite high enough, I think._

_I always liked the Jump program._

Trinity walks back to her bed and picks up the end table.

IIIIIIIIIIIII

**bant** Well, good! At least one of us does, it's becoming quite the …female dog to post…But nevertheless, I did update.

**kathysidle** Oh, serious is OK, it's what I am most of the time in person. You like? Actually, the idea for it came from a hairstyle….my hair was pigtailed, I was looking at my Matrix poster, and suddenly I was like, Wait! What if Trinity woke up one day…. and you know where it went from there. Thanks for the review! PS--- The Smith part is my favorite too.

**LiMiYa**Well, at least ONE person read The Lady or the Tiger, I think I confused a generation of people with that stupid allusion. Oh well. Glad you got it, anyway….I knew it fit with this story, but didn't know how exactly! I'm glad you didn't think it was gimmicky to put Smith in. That or the "what is logical" part. Thanks for reviewing again! PS--- Mom came home from the store with like three huge watermelons. Apparently they were on sale. I nearly choked.

**TrinityNeo6:** I've written almost all of it…the eleventh chapter will be a kind of behind-the-scenes, explaining where the story is placed, why the protagonist is Trinity instead of her significant other, and the tenth chapter is halfway done. Rest assured they will be posted…glad you like it!

**Destiny Chaser:** That's okay, I'm gonna take a break from the Internet soon too, what with school (shudder) starting again and all….Plus your review was so coherent and long that I have _complete _amnesia of any lack of feedback on Chapter Seven! Excellently done. It's not easy to mess with my software like that…

Yes! Drops of doubt included, right on the nose. Those were half on accident and half deliberate. This story is so weird; it seems like it's writing itself, hence the ending's hitting me one evening as I stared into the bonfire. It's utterly perfect, I love it to death, and I _am_ the captain of this ship so I believe if you do not like it you can go to hell. (Not you personally. "You" in general.)

And NO! I have actually followed a train of thought for once into its little eenie weenie Trainman-carrying station. Mabel could very well BE a program, really, if you think about it. Trinity/Adele could be trapped in a universe made entirely of programs, which might be easier for the machines than rewiring dozens' of people's memories to fit her being insane into it, which they'd have to do. Capisce? So, you're right; she's not a program per se like Merv and Smith, but just a sentient play put on for her "daughter". Tell me if you think I'm wrong…I may well just be deluded.

The fic will be concluded by the tenth chapter…I hate long unconcluding ones. But resolved? Hmmm….BUM BUM BUM…. Thanks again!

**sleeping**** awake: **It's okay if you don't get it; my summary of it is meandering at best. I suggest reading the story, (at ) , and don't worry, it's short if you suffer through the language! And yes, I would like to smack Smith, but I know a lot of fangirls who would jump me for it and pound me to a bloody mass. So no go there.

**Misty7:** I live for originality, man! I hope you're hooked enough to have read this next chapter, since it's one of my favorites.

**SapphireNight** Yep--- the story's a real one. I kind of gave away the ending to it, for which I feel remorse, but oh well…Glad you liked it, anyways; I'll give the long-dead author props. Yo! You rock, Frank R. Stockton! Here's another chapter, not quite as fast; hope you enjoy. It's funny that you said it--- I was kind of considering a sequel, since I like the idea, but it'd have to be very short, and it'd take place somewhere else entirely…

**Meepie** Well, Smith's could have him think he's a program, and run around sticking his hands in nurses' bellies…ew. Disgusting. But yeah, did you like this chapter too?

Next chapter: the conclusion…


	10. Awake

**AUTHOR'S NOTE**

(Author's note's at the front this time. No reason...really...Skip to the little decoration if you don't feel like reading these...)

Whoo. Sorry for both the extremely long chapter and the extremely long wait--- my Internet was kaput and my father was downright SLOTHLIKE in fixing it. But you have the chapter the way I like it now, anyways. Before, I hated it. Less romance, less puppy-dog eyes, less blood. Now it's good. Not too OOC, I think. I'm going to write an author's note at the end as soon as I edit it, (so it's gonna be a few months) explaining where in the Matrix trilogy it was, why Trinity is the main character, the songs that made me think of it, the deliberate parallel to Reloaded (HINT) etc. etc. It's going to be extremely different, the story, actually--- much more in the chapters and crap. Tell me if you have any ideas. And I'm also thinking of writing a sequel. Milk the franchise and all that. Can you tell I like the plot?

So here are your damn reviewer shoutouts, anyways.

**kathysidle** I think a lot of us have cracked up at the uberdramatic Trinity parts in the movies, man. Especially the dying scene? The theater's silent, everyone sobbing quietly--- and my friend starts laughing her ass off. SO many angry stares. Yeah, I did that for a reason… you'll find why in my revised edition. Thanks for reviewing! And good luck with that disorder you got there….:D

**bant**Sorry, I so did not write back soon….but YOU nearly figured out the ending, you lucky little fanboy/girl! Thanks. I pride myself on my unashamed cliffies.

**MistyX** Excellent! I have TRANQILITY! Up yours, Ritalin! (pumps fist triumphantly) And thanks for the comment--- my self-esteem skyrocketed. No, this is not an after-death fic, thank God, although I was contemplating it at one time I did not give in. It's…oh, screw it…in the six months between M1 and Reloaded. They were supposed to be in Zion by now, but got delayed while looking for her. There. I said it. Don't worry about confusing sentences, I get what you're saying. (Great minds think alike!) And I guess she did visit Neo? Even if he was STILL POSSIBLY A FIGMENT of her IMAGINATION, which also makes me sad but there's no way around it. This ending fell from the sky and I love it to death. So consider this chapter my explanation, incoherent as it may be. PS--You seem like an extremely good writer; have any tips on editing? Need….feedback….

**SapphireNight**Yes….updating…_quickly…(_darty eyes) I took seriously your suggestion to write a sequel. And don't worry, it won't introduce philosophical Frenchmen and Will Ferrell with a beard. I hope. Thanks for all your reviews! I feel needed!

**Cinn** Thanks! (And I forget to review faithfully others' stories too…wicked me. 'S okay. )

**eridani** My only friend…the end….la la la….Beatles… (snaps out) Thank you, sir! Ma'am! Denizen of fandom! Hope you liked it.

**sleeping**** awake: **Trinity. In. Target. After I got done laughing, it occurred to me that it was scary enough to get into the story… And rest assured, there is no Trin-splat on the pavement outside the hospital. Neo would try to scrape her together, and we can't have his coat getting messy now can we? Ew. Anyways. Sorry--- the suspense really must have made you crazy…I'll send you to the institution and maybe Neo will come for you? Fingers crossed! Thanks so much for reviewing all these…

**TrinityNeo6: **Good, another Frank R. Stockton reader! I'm sure he's happy. Decaying…and happy. Glad you think it's cool, because I doubt it all the freaking time….Many thanks! PS—Are you on the Looking Glass forum? Or does someone have your name?

**lilleo**I like it too….And all reviews are helpful, don't sell yourself short. They buoy the author's interest and encourage carpal tunnel syndrome.

**Destiny Chaser:** Duality—good name for a character!! (writes frantically) Perhaps a Gemini-Anyhoo. Yeah, the dreams are always my favorite parts of this fic; I hate it when they're so realistic it's not funny. But--- what do you mean she's an adolescent?? I mean, I suppose she could be, you're the reader and you get to decide…But let me just say, the mad sex scene that's after this one would be a bit Y Tu Mama Tambien if she is---Just kidding. Another thing I hate. Poorly written erotic trysts. I hate to say it, but I'm horrible with symbolism and so there is like zilch in this story. Maybe it was subconscious for me, though, or something? I mean, sometimes random objects do mean something. But yes, I was thinking of the speedway when I wrote the car crash. That, and it was lifted DIRECTLY from something that happened to me this summer…psychotic horseback riding teacher, dark hair, new cell phone, near-miss with semi, Nithke buckles seat belt. Really. Scary, ain't it. (Thanks for all the commentary!!)

**I&-&I**

**CHAPTER TEN**

**Awake**

A cold wind blows through the room.

It seeps through the holes in her mint-green hospital pajamas, numbing the skin and carrying with it a faint smell of the city. Gasoline. Smoke. Even though the ground is several hundred feet away.

A cavalier monologue, she talks with bravado to ensure she will go through with it—

_(Ow. I guess not all of the glass flew into the street with the table, since there seems to be some embedded in my left eyebrow…You really should bolt down your furniture and put grills on the window, Doctor. Irresponsible. If this isn't a simulation, my parents will probably sue your ass. At least they'll be rich after my body is scraped from the pavement…) _

_Was it ever this cold here? _she wonders, still trying to figure out if the place she's at is real or a hoax as her bare bleeding feet step closer to the window. Blood all over her from shards of glass that didn't quite go out with the rest, instead blowing back at her, carried on this chilly wind. _I remember it being warmer in October---_

_Well, stop thinking now, whatever your name is. We'll find out soon enough._

_If this is the Matrix, I'll be on the next rooftop soon. If it's not, well, I'm dead. Which I guess won't be so bad, as it's either that or a life that I want to escape anyways._

She no longer cares about the darts of pain in her soles, just wants to get to the window before anyone can rush through the door. The six feet pass in slow motion. She punches out the remainder of the glass and steps onto the frame.

Looking downwards, her stomach flips with vertigo. It is a dead drop, a sheer cliff of brick and window. She knows that she is on the forty-first floor, but it hasn't struck her until now just how far four hundred and ten feet really is; how there is a straight line from her to the ground, and nothing is stopping her from hitting it---

_Of course there's something stopping you. It isn't real. The only way it can hurt you is if you believe it can. _

_You know you have to do this, Adele. So go._

The soldier inside of her breaks her gaze from the ground and looks dispassionately ahead of her, calculating the distance to the rooftop across the street and twenty feet away. _Not too many steps. Probably one back, a thrust. Then aim. Concentrate. _

She takes a deep breath and focuses, shutting out all other thought.

_This is it. _

_'Bend the limits… Remake it…_

_"It's only a simulation, Trinity. Hack the code." _

_Make it give you what you need.'_

She takes the step back. The desperation, the familiar wanting-another-world-so-badly-that-she's-willing-to-die rises. She does not shake it off--- she will need strong emotion to manipulate the code that she cannot see but knows is there.

Trinity/Adele tenses her muscles for the jump----

but something, something, tells her to stop.

_Wait. You're not ready. Just wait a minute and then go---_She fights it for a nanosecond, then sighs and gives in, figuring one more pause won't hurt. Relaxing her muscles, she perches at the edge of the windowsill.And before she can stop herself, Trinity looks down again. __

Her stomach plunges at the sight. _Didn't I learn my lesson the first time? _She swallows, glances up--- and does a double take.

Directly below her, a black car. Haphazardly parked, headlights running, its wheel on the curb.

_Holy shit--- No. No, it's probably just an emergency. Someone's in labor or something. But the make looks so---_

Then from the hallway, a nurse screams.

Adele jerks around, her bloody hair hitting her in the face. Stepping forward quickly, her foot lands on a piece of glass and flies out from under her. She lands with a thud on her back.

Her eyes closed in pain, she does not see who opens the door. But she hears a sound she recognizes.

Pistol fire.

When she opens them, a scene from her dreams---

Dr. Jacobsen flings open the door of her room. He has taken off his white coat and bared the brown suit that he wears underneath. A handgun is clenched in one fist as he fires into the hall, grimacing.

And someone is returning his fire.

IIIIIII

A blanket's harsh rasping fibers are the first thing she feels. Next is the shocking cold on the parts of her body still exposed, shoulders, ankles, arm; frigid chill against the slimy skin.

She retches red fluid onto whatever is below her as arms support her. Finally Trinity is eased back into someone's hold. He grips her gingerly, but at the edges she can feel him never wanting to let go.

The rough metallic world around them (though she dimly recognizes the room they are in) can wait, because the first thing she sees is his face. His eyes searching her body as if he can't believe she's really there, but as her own snap open he looks into them. Unsmiling, bated breath, waiting for her to say something---

Too many emotions flying through her now. This is too good. Too unexpected. A surprise present--- a wonderful awakening---

So brilliantly, she croaks, "I got it all over your pants, didn't I?"

Shouts of laughter surround them. As she looks around, the entire crew is there, their faces blurred with her baby's eye view. Only Morpheus stands out, for he kneels next to them, beaming.

Neo just stares at her, a grin finally blossoming on his face. He laughs once, as if it's something he hasn't done for a while, though his voice is choked.

"Yeah, well…Not like I haven't been covered in fluid before…" (Then so only she can hear: "Oh, God, Trin…")

The crowd laughs again before quieting, and this time she can hear the relief in their voices. She smiles wearily at him, then tries to ask.

"How did you find me?" the woman who is no longer Adele says hoarsely. "How did you look…"

"The phone call," says Morpheus. "The ten digits you dialed but didn't get to the ringtone on. The number came through at the last second on our equipment; it gave us an idea of where you were in the simulation. Without that we had no idea where they had you. So then we headed to the location of the call---"

Neo mutters, never looking away from her, "Breaking into a Perkins. We looked pretty stupid, I'd have to say." One corner of his mouth rises in a little sideways grin. She cannot say how much she loves him.

"Exactly," Morpheus claps him on the shoulder. "Nobody there could tell us anything about where you had been taken, only that you put up quite a fight. Nothing, no information at all. Even when the police showed up we couldn't get anything out of them."

"Of course, that might have been because they were _firing_ at you---" Link stage-whispers from out of her range of vision.

Morpheus ignores the rumble of guffaws and continues. "So we had to hack our way into every database of every place you could be and search for an Adele Dubois. Even then, we weren't sure if they had you under a false name or not, but luckily we found the hospital and threatened our way in. They had Smith guarding you, unfortunately."

"I know," she rasps, her eyes closing briefly. "He was my psychiatrist."

"Really?" Neo says. "What did they…No. You don't have to tell us now ---"

"Was that why you were going to jump out the window?" Morpheus furrows his brow.

Trinity does not answer. What can she say, '_No, I'm sorry, I thought you all weren't real_?'

Instead, she moves her free hand up to her forehead and feels for the deep gash from the glass. It is still there, deep and wet; her hand traverses up her scalp, searching for---

She stops as she feels something else.

Something damp, glued to her skull with the drying goop.

Pauses for a second, mind racing. Then yanks a section down and stares at it fixedly, its six-inch (yes, the way she'd cut it on the ship, but _still_) length.

_Her hair floats around her in the tank---_

"Jesus Christ," she breathes in a hiccupping voice. "This can't be a dream. This can't be---"

A worry line appears between Neo's eyes.

"Trinity," says Morpheus, "is a dreamer ever able to ask that without realizing the truth?" He smiles. "We're real. Welcome back to the Nebuchadnezzar."

"But---"

"They were in a hurry to get you in after they ambushed the ship, it seems. Not enough time to shave your head. I assure you, this is what we think of as the real world. _You are here_."

Neo nods assent. He grips her tighter, reassuring her without words. She tries to calm down. _I'm just so used to thinking that way, second-guessing everything, that it's carried over. Yeah. That's it._

But once doubted, now the world is shaky again, sliding out from underneath…

Unbidden and uncalled for, the memory of Smith-the-shrink rises.

_"My point, Adele, is how do you know what's real? Your senses are telling you that there is another world, because you have experienced it. But couldn't they be lying? Because if you're right, Adele, then that means that my senses are lying to me too. We're both hooked up to a machine somewhere telling us that what we see now is real--"_

_Oh no. Oh GOD._

The euphoria and relief disappear. The fatal question emerges.

_I went insane once, could I do it again? Could I have made a fantasy just before I jumped?_

She is aware that she is shaking uncontrollably. Gasping for breath, her chest rattles but she can't get air.

"Trin. Trin. What's wrong? What's happening?" Neo says intensely, desperately, staring into her face. She would think that his eyes are begging her for something, but she's too occupied with the question, the horrible terrible question.

"Shit--- oh shit, oh---" Her voice cracks and she breaks down. "Neo. Tell me this…how will I know when I'm in the real world?…Even when you're looking at me right here I can't tell. I can't and it scares me, I could before but I can't now---will I ever be able to? Will I?" She is desperate in her turn, a death grip on the arm of a man who might or might not really be there.

The crew is silent. _She's not all right, _they're thinking.

"They've brainwashed you. I was afraid of this…Whatever you're thinking, it's not real," Morpheus says firmly. "You're dehydrated. You'll think more clearly when we've got some fluids into you. Why don't you take her into the other---"

"_But that's what I would want you to say!" _she sobs inaudibly, her face rumpling. "Maybe I just went crazy again--I'm really Adele---My parents are staring at me talk to thin air right now ---"

"_What's the bastard done to you?"_ Neo yells.

"Mom. Dad. I'm sorry for doing this… but I can't get loose from it, I can't escape it. Forget about me and move on," she says just in case, loudly, clearly enough for someone to hear. "I love you. And if I ever see you again, I'll make it up to you, really---"

"Trinity! Listen to me. _I'm _what's real! _This---_" He gestures wildly. "All _this _is real!"

"I don't want to let them take me in again---"

"Get her into sick bay!" Morpheus shouts. "Now!"

"Tell me the truth, just, please--- am I--- imagining you or are you---"

"I don't know," he says, attempting calm, desperately trying to help. "I don't know. ..But I'll, I'll stay by you while you figure it out."

(0)(0)

_And so I have to ask you, which is it, then?_

_It's your choice. Not that it matters. But still._

_Be careful now. The outcome of the story depends on which gets chosen---_

_God damn it…_

_So now, whoever you are,_

_is it the lady?_

_Or the tiger?___

**THE END**

**88888888**


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